Book Excerpt

(from “Root Woman”)

… Wednesday afternoon, as I approach her front gate, Kahlee is already coming out the door with greetings and smiles. Dressed in festive–coloured layers and a jaunty tweed cap, she radiates the whimsy of going to a Tea Party. These walks in nature are exciting to her; she gets to reunite with her plant friends. I notice a medicinal plant, mullein, growing outside the fence on the streetfront. Its leaves are soft and velvety like lamb’s ears, and I wonder aloud if such a tactile treasure wouldn’t quickly get plucked up in this inner–city neighbourhood? But Kahlee says she wouldn’t mind; her philosophy is that the plucker would subconsciously need that plant, in whatever way, to assist them. “That’s how it works, kiddo,” she says with a grin. As I unlock the passenger door for her, she reaches in her day–pack and presents me with a book called The Standing People: A Field Guide of Medicinal Plants for the Prairie Provinces. It’s a full–colour handbook she and Dave published in 2003, highlighting over 150 medicinal plants found on the prairies. I had been planning to purchase the manual at a local bookstore, so I insist on paying her for this unexpected copy. She refuses, saying it’s a gift. And that is that. We drive for half an hour through low hills ripe with autumnal blush, to Pike Lake Provincial Park. Ours is the only vehicle in the parking lot. It’s the kind of overcast afternoon that is humming with stillness. Heavy with an unburst humidity. We stroll over to the river’s edge and within minutes, there’s a huge blue dragonfly clinging to Kahlee’s index finger. It feels today like we are part of nature when it’s not conscious of being watched; like being at the zoo once it’s closed for the night.